The Spirit proved to a frustrating entity when I was working at the movie theatre. We had a poster of it up in the main lobby and everyone who came in always saw it and commented "oh man Sin City 2". I never bother correcting them because really, this movie did look like Sin City 2. It was the guy who actually argued with me that there is no such book as "The Spirit" and that this was in fact, the sequel to Sin City. It was one of those arguments where nobody can win since he wasn't going to back down and neither was I. Theatre policies strictly forbid stabbing people in the neck, no matter how wrong about movies they may have been. My point is, this movie really does look like Frank Miller was trying to emulate the success he had with Sin City.
The problem is that while it does bear some resemblance to Sin City it looks, it doesn't even come close to touching it in terms of quality. I think they were trying to go for a live action cartoon with this one. People get hit over the head with toilet seats, the Spirit's pants fall down at one point, there are a bunch of "wacky" clones that get killed off throughout the movie, etc. The problem is, none of it really works. It tries so hard to be wacky but falls flat just about every time. I didn't see this movie in a theatre, but I can just about hear the awkward audience silences that would follow just about every joke.
I'm not opposed to the idea. It would be a good juxtaposition to the intense violence and grittiness of Sin City. It all falls apart in the execution. Unfortunately I can't say how accurate this one is compared to the comics, as I'm not at all familiar with them. A former co-worker of mine made it sound like they weren't similar at all. I assume Miller just thought "well people loved how Sin City looked, so we'll just do that shit again." Sadly at no point did somebody step forward and tell him no.
The cast is full of recognizable names, but all of them are quite bad. Sam Jackson is good as the villain, but he could play this role is his fucking sleep by this point. He was probably just on auto-pilot the entire time. He does dress up as a nazi at one point, which is something I don't think I've ever seen him do before.
Eva Mendes is quite bad and her character just needs to be hit by bats. Either the baseball kind or the flying kind would be acceptable. Then again I've always sort of disliked Mendes ever since Hitch. That movie would have been so much better had it ended with her dying alone in her apartment while Will Smith finds happiness with someone else. I wonder if her characters are this terrible on the page or if it's just something she brings to the roles. Either way, fuck Eva Mendes.
However the worst of the bunch is Scarlett Johannson as Sam's henchwoman. She is absolutely terrible. Her first line of dialogue happens and it's awful but you assume it can only get better. It doesn't. Her performance is so bad that I actually went back over her previous work to see if she was ever a good actor. I know she's had some quality performances so I have to assume she just wasn't trying here. Or the dialogue was so awful that Audrey fucking Hepburn couldn't make it sound acceptable. I wouldn't be surprised by either situation.
The main guy as The Spirit does ok, but the problem is that the character says such stupid shit that it taints his performance. The opening monologue about the city just goes on and on until you honestly can't believe he's still yapping about it. Then they revisit that speech at the end of the movie. It was in all of the trailers so I'm sure you know. It's no less annoying in the actual movie than it was then. It's weird that the one guy I hadn't really heard of walks away from this movie the least damaged.
This movie tries to have a lot of odd quirky touches and an outlandish sense of humour, but it never really works. It's not quite the complete disaster I had read about it, but it's definitely a really bad movie. Hell Miller you helped write Robocop 2, step it up!!!!
4/10
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